What is This Blog All About?

Sometimes, my search traffic makes me crazy. It's sort of like someone popped his or her head into my office, asked a question, and then was called away before I could answer...and I never saw him again. Sometimes, the questions are inane: I often get variations on "What's wrong with SpongeBob?" I don't actually have the answer to that, though I have been known to identify the odd Bikini Bottom logical dilemma now and then. I also get a fair amount of traffic on questions like, "Where are the bees?" and "What's wrong with the bees?" I can't answer those questions, though sometimes they're entertaining.

I also get search traffic, though, on questions I CAN answer...if only those search stats would leave me a phone number or email address! I know the answer to "how bad is it to get married outside the Catholic church?" and "what is the easiest state to get married in?" I even have a viable theory on "what's wrong with Cinderella?" But I didn't answer those questions on my blogs, and I don't know where to send the response card.

This blog will consist ENTIRELY of posts responsive to the search traffic on my other blogs. I can't promise to answer all the questions, though I will endeavor to answer those that seem to require serious answers. I'll also share some of the crazy ones and open some up to the floor for debate or suggestions. I think it's going to be fun. Educational sometimes, but always fun.

Do Parents Have an Impact on Tweens?

Yes.

We're a major annoyance to them.

What Do Spongebob's Nuts Look Like?

I must admit, I almost didn't answer this one.

It wasn't just that I was a little afraid of the person who might be seeking such information, though that was certainly a factor.

Mostly, though, I was just afraid that I'd...you know...find out the answer.

I've never really thought of Spongebob that way.

I couldn't bring myself to look.

Fortunately, I have an unofficial research assistant in the form of humor writer Barb Cooper. Barb's married, so she wasn't afraid to look.

She got right back to me with good news: He doesn't have any.

I'm not 100% confident, though. After all, THIS sponge doesn't have eyes, either. Or arms. Or feet. Or a nose. I guess anything is possible.


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Is It Bad to Stop Taking Birth Control in the Middle?

That depends.

In the middle of what?



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How Big is My Dryer?

Honestly, I don't know. I might be able to make an educated guess if you'd given a little more information, or maybe left a photograph, because I recently did some shopping for washers and dryers. With nothing but the question to go on, though, this one is wide open.

Fortunately, though, this is an easy question to answer. The manufacturer's website will provide both information about the capacity of your dryer and about the external dimensions. So, whether you're looking for information about where you can fit the dryer or what you can fit IN the dryer, that information is readily available.


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What's Wrong With Men?

I know, I know.

But someone searched this. Seriously.




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Does Writing Really Help You Remember?

Yes.

That said, I can think of at least three different things this question might mean. Fortunately, the answer to each is the same--at least in the short form. It does, or at least it can.

If you mean, "Will writing something down soon after the fact help you remember it later?" my experience definitely says yes. I was an avid journaler from the age of nine into my twenties, and I definitely find that reading my old journals brings back memories--not just flat stories that I can remember happening, but actual visual, experiential memories. Whether or not the act of recording itself helps afix something in your mind, I'm not certain. But it seems likely, because of the second kind of writing to remember that springs to mind--the kind you do when you're studying or trying to memorize a speech. Recreating your notes or reformatting them into an outline is a great way to help information seep into your brain and take hold.

The third possible meaning is a bit different (and I'm a bit less certain about the answer), but I still think the answer is yes. That's writing to remember something that you've already forgotten. For instance, can journaling help one to recall childhood incidents that have been buried, or just plain slipped away? Can writing down as much detail as you DO recall about a crime or an accident help to recreate the scene in your mind in order to fill in the blanks? I think so. And I think psychologists think so.

Which brings us right back to where we began. Does writing really help you remember? Yes, it can.



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What is the French Word for White?

Blanc or blanche, depending upon whether the noun modified is masculine or feminine. This seems to be a fairly pressing issue out there, since I've gotten about a dozen unique hits to RockStories on variations of this question over the past couple of weeks. The only single question that brings more traffic is "5000 words is how many pages?"

This seems like a good opportunity to once again offer a few tips on effective web searching. You see, it's very unlikely that a web page that offers the answer to this question will contain the text "What is the French word for white?", yet when you enter that text, that's what Google (or Yahoo, or MSN, or whomever you've chosen to use) goes looking for. In fact, it's likely that there are very few web pages anywhere in the world that use the phrase "What is the French word for white?" That may be why the people asking this question keep landing on my writing blog, which does NOT contain the answer to their question (but which does contain a post that uses both the phrase "french word" and the word "white").

I just searched the phrase "is the french word for white" (in quotes) and turned up numerous useful responses. Because, after all, that EXACT PHRASE is part of the sentence, "Blanc is the French word for white," and THAT'S the sentence we were looking for.



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What Does the Catechism of the Catholic Church Say that Dogs Go to Heaven?

The Catholic church (like, I believe, all mainstream Christian religions) teaches that only human beings have immortal souls. The Catechism says "Of all visible creatutes only man is 'able to know and love his creator.' He is 'the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake,' and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God's own life. It was for this end that he was created and this is the fundamental reason for this dignity." (356)




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Do You Have to Know How to Write Good to Blog?

I found this post over at Wingnut SEO; it's definitely in the spirit of this blog, both in that the question was pulled from search stats and in the tone of the answer, which is both tongue-in-cheek and factual at the same time. Check it out: Do You Have to Know How to Write Good to Blog?

Another adventage to posting this link: Wingnut said s/he wasn't in the top 50 search results for this term, but now that s/he's used that phrase in a post title and I've used it in a text link, that may all change. And you all know how I enjoy random search traffic outcomes.

What's wrong with Cinderella, anyone?



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What's Wrong With My Body?

After getting a dozen or so hits from various search engines on this phrase over a 24-hour period, I toyed with a few responses.

There are, after all, some assumptions we can make--particularly since they were all coming from the United States. I considered simply guessing: You eat too much processed food and you don't get enough exercise.

I actually thought, though, that these searchers were looking for something specific. Maybe there was a book out by that name, or they were looking for a particular website. It seemed too strange that suddenly multiple people were searching EXACTLY that phrase. They clumped up in my search results, too, one right after another.

I'd speculated about this a bit and not quite decided how to respond when I happened to carry some laundry into the living room last night at just the right moment. "Just the right moment", in this case, was the moment during which my daughter was watching television and Drake of Drake & Josh woke up with green hands. Josh ran to look up the condition on the Internet and voila! Drake said incredulously, "WhatsWrongWithMyBody.com?"

"Yeah," Josh said. "I have it bookmarked."

Guys. They made it up. The URL, as you might expect, redirects to nick.com. And when that doesn't work out...well...I guess we go to Google.



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Should You Work for Free?

The answer to this question (like so many others) is a resounding and heartfelt, "It depends." I'm very firm on this.

This question arises frequently in the professional writing world. Established writers, as a rule, want to discourage new writers from writing for free because it might hurt the market rates those established writers command. That's wrong. A new writer's focus needs to be on her career, not the good of the industry; let that burden fall to those of us who are already making a living.

I'm a firm believer that for some writers in some circumstances, there are very good reasons to write for "free". I expect that the same general principles apply in other fields.

That said, I think that most of the people currently writing for free aren't getting much (if any) mileage out of it, because they don't have clear strategies or a clear understanding of how that writing will move them to the next step. Getting "clips" or "exposure" or "links" in a general sense is very unlikely to pay off; if you're writing for "free", make sure you know exactly what you're getting in return and exactly how it will help take you to the next level.

Can Middle Schoolers Get Pregnant?

I know this blog is pretty new for me to be recycling posts, but I think I'm compelled by basic common sense to re-use the answer here that I set forth in my response to "Can You Rape a Prostitute?"

Yes, but you shouldn't.

Of course, any girl who has reached puberty and has a normally functioning reproductive system can get pregnant. The really big news is, if you time it just right you can actually manage to get pregnant BEFORE YOU'VE EVER MENSTRUATED. Yep, it's true. It's pretty rare, but menstruation is something that happens to clear out the unused eggs at the end of a cycle, so it isn't going to start until a couple of weeks AFTER you start being fertile.

Let me back up, though. If this is a question you have to ask, you are NOWHERE NEAR ready to be considering sex.



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My old dog won't eat; is she dying?

This isn't mine. I stole this search term from a friend, whose blog is largely focused on parenting and knitting (Google--could we have a word about your discernment process?) As she so aptly pointed out, a dog who doesn't eat WILL die, even if the loss of appetite wasn't a symptom of impending death. Thus, it's not something to be ignored.

She also pointed out that when her old dog wouldn't eat, the vet suggested that she change up her diet a bit, and lo and behold--home cooked meals did the trick. But loss of appetite can also indicate serious medical issues, and your vet is really the best source of information about this.

That said, I want to add a word about searching the Internet. Even if the Internet was the best source of this information, this search string was doomed to fail. Remember, Google returns search results in large part based on a match-up of the words you typed into the search box with the words on the page it returns (excluding "stop words" like "the"). It's common for people searching for information on the web to type in questions like the one above, but it's generally not very effective: if you were writing a veterinary information site, would you write "my old dog won't eat, is she dying?" on the page? Probably not--unless you were a savvy search engine marketer.

Thus, the question above turns up a knitting / parenting blog where the author has talked a bit about her concerns about her old dog, while a search for: dog symptoms loss of appetite turns up pages of veterinary information about various medical conditions that can cause dogs to lose their appetites, warning signs, and what you should do. In short, when you're looking for information on the Internet, don't type in the question you want answered--type in the key words you'd expect to find in the answer, or that you'd put in a heading if you were writing the answer.

Is it better to be Catholic or get a divorce?

I'm not sure that I understand this question, because they're not mutually exclusive. The Bible says that anyone who divorces and remarries commits adultery, and so one can't be a fully practicing Catholic if one has divorced and remarried without receiving a declaration of nullity from the church. But the simple act of getting a divorce, while discouraged, isn't a bar to practicing Catholism--to oversimplify a bit, it's simply disregarded. A civil divorce doesn't impact your obligations based on the vows you took before God, so in the eyes of the church, you're still married.

If I Died, Who Would Care?

My first inclination was to say that no one could hope to find the answer to this question through a search engine, because the answer was unique and personal for every one of us. But even as I set out to write that, I realized that it wasn't entirely true; I think that the fundamental answer is the same for each and every one of us.

Here it is: You'd be surprised.

It's pretty easy, in day-to-day life, to take the people around us for granted. It's also easy to give the impression of taking them for granted even when we don't, or to assume that people know the small differences they make in our lives even when we don't mention them--or that they have plenty of other, closer people to affirm them and don't really need to hear from us. It might even be a little intrusive.

But all those people who aren't saying anything for whatever myriad reasons make sense are still there. Friends you haven't talked to in months, or maybe even years, but who know you're out there and value that even if time and life carry them in different directions; the customer who comes into your store three days a week and counts on the extra moment or two you take to chat with her because she's alone most of the time; the person yet unmet whose life you might change entirely.

Someone. That's the answer. It might be someone you overlook, someone you never thought of, someone you've forgotten, someone you don't yet know well. But if you died, it would change someone's life, and not for the better.

What's the Side Affects [sic] of Putting the Condom on Wrong and Still Having Sex?

Pregnancy.

Oh, and STDs. Possibly AIDS.

Or maybe none of those things. It's a gamble, just like unprotected sex.

Can You Rape a Prostitute?

Yes, but you shouldn't.

This is a reasonable question in the view of the fact that a judge in Pennsylvania recently ruled that raping (oops, sorry, forcing a prostitute to perform sex acts at gunpoint) was mere theft of services. Armed robbery, if you will.

In truth, what's the argument? That prostitutes regularly consent to sex, so they're deemed ALWAYS to have consented, in all circumstances?

That's a pretty slippery slope, don't you think?

How Long Have Smarties Candies Been Around?

Wow.

You have no idea what kind of can of worms you've opened with this one.

The answer is....

IT DEPENDS.

You see, "Smarties" is actually the name attached to two very different candies, and feelings run strong about each.

The real Smarties are disc shaped, concave, and pastel. They come in clear cellophane rolls. The company that makes real Smarties was founded in 1932 and came to American in 1949.

Fake Smarties were introduced by Rowntree in 1937 and acquired by Nestle about fifteen years ago. They are chocolate, and bear a very close resemblance to M & Ms, except that they do not have "M" printed on them. In Canada, where the fake Smarties are considered the real Smarties, real Smarties are called Rockets.

Please note that the classification of Smarties in this post has been entirely objective.

How Bad is it To Get Married Outside the Catholic Church?

I'm going to assume that the person conducting this church was either Catholic or considering marrying a Catholic. Otherwise, the answer is quick and easy--it's not bad at all! No worries!

The thing that really intrigued me about this search was that it didn't land the visitor to my Catholic Blog, which gets a lot of traffic on Catholic marriage and Catholic divorce related strings. No, this one led to What's Wrong Around Us?, where there is exactly one post referencing the fact that a lot of Catholics get married outside the church because they don't want to jump through the hoops. That single post--from last March--is buried among rape cases, punitive damages issues, speculation about why the bees are disappearing, a few objections to the world of SpongeBob Squarepants, a note about buying on ebay, and a very popular post on birth control for middle schoolers. (Note to Google: This process may need a little refining.)

But I digress.

"How bad is it to get married outside the Catholic church?"

If you care enough to ask this question, it's about as bad as it gets. If you've been baptized Catholic and are married outside the church without permission, the marriage is invalid in the eyes of the church. Living with your spouse in an invalid marriage has the same ramifications as living with someone OUTSIDE of marriage. You can't make a good confession as long as the situation continues and you haven't resolved to change it. You can't take communion.

If a technicality is the only problem--that is, if you just CHOSE to get married outside the church or did it in a hurry and there was no reason that you couldn't have been married within the church, you can probably get your marriage "regularized" and blessed by the church--talk to your priest. If there was an impediment to the marriage, like a prior marriage of one of the spouses, that will have to be resolved before the marriage can be recognized.